Medicines to be administered to hospital inpatients are determined based on prescriptions from doctors, and arranged in transfer containers such as trays and envelops by pharmacists according to the prescriptions. Most of these medicines are automatically dispensed by an automated dispensing device.
There are, on the other hand, some medicines under supervised conditions that are required to be treated by pharmacists and are not permitted to be dispensed by automated dispensing devices. Thus, human work cannot be completely removed from medicine arrangement.
However, such manual work may result in incorrect medicine arrangement due to human error. Therefore, to provide more reliable medicine arrangement, an attempt has been made to direct pharmacists which medicines to be arranged by using LED illumination (see, for example, Patent Literature 1).
The following is a description, with reference to FIG. 24, of conventional medicine arrangement support system 1. In FIG. 24, first of all, transfer container 3 is transferred to workbench 2 of system 1. Next, medicine arranger 4 scans the ID number of the transfer container with a bar-code reader or other similar device. As a result, the name of the patient and his/her prescription are displayed on display unit 5 based on the ID number. Watching the display, medicine arranger 4 arranges medicines that are not dispensed by automated medicine dispensing device 6. At this moment, the LEDs of the medicine storage compartments in medicine shelf 7 light up, indicating which compartments contain the medicines to be arranged. Thus, system 1 instructs medicine arranger 4 which medicines to be arranged by using LED illumination, thereby supporting medicine arrangement.
Medicine arranger 4 takes a necessary number of medicines out of the compartments with illuminating LEDs in medicine shelf 7. With the knowledge of the precise locations of the compartments containing the necessary medicines, medicine arranger 4 can arrange medicines correctly, which indicates high reliability of medicine arrangement.
When the arrangement of the necessary medicines is completed, medicine arranger 4 inspects as to whether the medicine arrangement has been done correctly by referring to the prescription displayed on display unit 5.
In order to prevent human error, an inspector, who is a different person from medicine arranger 4, inspects as to whether medicine arranger 4 has arranged medicines correctly in transfer container 3 according to a prescription.
Medicine arrangement is inspected as described hereinbefore. In some hospitals, there is, besides medicine shelf 7, a medicine cabinet (not shown) for infusion bags and other materials that should be kept under controlled temperature. In the case where both shelf 7 and the cabinet are used, medicines from shelf 7 are inspected first, and then infusion bags that are not contained in shelf 7 are dispensed from the cabinet, and inspected at the cabinet.
In the conventional medicine arrangement support system 1, it is determined that an inspector who performs an inspect should be a different person from medicine arranger 4. Actually, however, the role of the inspector is sometimes played by medicine arranger 4. This is because some hospitals with a shortage of workers have no other choice but to have the same person sometimes act as both medicine arranger 4 and an inspector.
Inspectors may make mistakes in an inspection of medicine arrangement, due for example to the lack of concentration or to the influence of preceding prescriptions when inspectors inspect different medicine arrangements in succession.
Thus, a human-performed inspection of medicine arrangement involves human error.
This can also happen when the same person performs an inspection at different locations. For example, when the same inspector performs an inspection at both the shelf and the cabinet, the inspection results at the shelf may confuse the inspector's thought process while inspecting at the cabinet. This may result in incorrect inspection results due to human error.
In order to prevent such human error so as to provide more reliable medicine preparation, it is preferable to perform a double inspect by two persons.
In the conventional medicine inspection support system, however, medicine preparation is often inspected by one inspector against the rule that the medicine preparation should be inspected by two inspectors to improve reliability. This may result in human error, making the inspection of the medicine preparation less reliable. Thus, the problem of the conventional medicine inspection support system is that the inspecting rules designed to provide a reliable inspection are not followed in the medicine preparation.